Comparative Year IT Salary Survey 1999 - 2010
Data compares over seventy (73) IT positions from 1996 through 2010. It includes the dot com bubble, 9/11, the recession of 2002-2003, the recovery in 2006 and the recession of 2008-2010. The study is available in PDF, PDF with data in an excel spread sheet, and Word format.
Charts showing key compensation trends are provide in all versions of the study. A reduced version of one of the charts is shown below.
Employment News
IT Professionals are satisfied in their jobs but are looking
The vast majority of IT professionals are satisfied at work with 40 percent are satisfied with their jobs. Indeed, Janco finds that there is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the salary. Since more money equals greater job satisfaction, one could infer that for some, money does buy happiness.
However, more than 60% of IT Professionals feel they should be
making more money.
Though the majority of IT professionals seem to be
satisfied with their current jobs, it is not preventing almost 40% of them to
start looking for new opportunities. Nearly 1 in 5 are either actively
looking or will be looking within the next three
months.
Could proposed fed policy help IT Hiring
Several Republican senators and procurement experts have voiced their disagreement with a policy Obama administration officials are considering that would give a leg up to contractors who pay their employees more, according to a letter and comments at a hearing.
"We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation's small businesses," five senators wrote in a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Today, an Obama administration official said the president hasn't issued any policy regarding a contracting preference. Nevertheless, experts inside and outside of government have offered suggestions to the administration on improving contracting, as the president pledged to do in his reform memo.
- more infoArmy to reduce outsourcing
(Washington Technology) Army Secretary John McHugh told a Senate committee today that the Army plans to give outsourced jobs that are associated with inherently governmental functions to its civilian employees.
The Army intends to insource 7,162 positions this fiscal year, McHugh said in testimony before the Armed Services Committee. From fiscal 2011 to 2015, the service aims to take back 11,084 positions and give them to civilian employees. Of those, nearly 3,988 are for acquisition-related work, he said.
"Civilians are assuming increased responsibilities within the Army," he said.
In fiscal 2009, the Army saved significant resources by bringing back in house more than 900 "core governmental functions," McHugh added.
Core governmental functions, sometimes called critical functions, are jobs that are very close to inherently governmental functions, or work that only a government employee can do. Outsourcing core jobs can force the government to rely on the private sector's knowledge, and contractors potentially can unduly influence the government, officials say.
"The Army is recouping intellectual capital by insourcing former contracted positions,"McHugh said.
The Army identified these positions to insource in its ongoing contractor inventory review process.
Like McHugh, other military officers and Defense Department officials have announced plans in their fiscal 2011 budget proposals to take away numerous jobs from contractors, in areas such as acquisition and procurement.
- more infoBaby boomers face new challenges in the job market
According to the Congressional Budget OfficeOver the past 15 months, the stock market has wiped out $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings . With the downturn in the stock market and the laying off of so many IT professionals, there now is a situation where "baby boomer" are competing for the same jobs as the "millennials" are just getting out of college.
CIOs now have to decide whom to hire by sorting through a maze of
competing technical expertise, business acumen, cultural preferences, and career
expectations.
That is not always easy. Millennials have a tendency to eat,
sleep and breathe Web 2.0 technologies, and the value of that may not be
immediately clear to a traditional CIO.
Boomers
have expertise in more traditional technologies such as IT infrastructure and
operating systems. That's good news for large enterprises, which are always on
the lookout for IT professionals with the skills needed to support its largely
mainframe-based package-tracking system.
That type of expertise can limit boomers' prospects elsewhere.
This
eagerness to learn gives many millennials a leg up on the competition. There is
a managerial flip side to consider. Young IT workers who are bold enough to take
on new technologies are also more likely to be impatient with the constraints of
traditional workplaces.
Businesses
that expect all employees to march to the beat of the same drummer, however, may
have a tough time reining in millennials' more spirited work ethic and thirst
for experimentation.
Recession impacts IT entry positions the hardest
Take a look at the numbers defining the scope of the recession. When you break down the unemployment rate by age group, here's how it pans out: 16.7 percent for everyone aged 15 to 24, 8.2 percent for everyone aged 25 to 44, and 6.3 percent for everyone aged 45 and older. So, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed.
Federal records show that the older you are, the more money you're likely to be making: The median weekly salary for workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket is about 41 percent less than what someone aged 25 to 44 makes -- and they're making 6 percent less than the folks in the 55-and-up group.
When you look at the numbers in the Janco 2010 salary survey, staff-level salaries start at a median of $40,671 and climb higher as the jobs proceed up the (very short) ladder.
And, unfair as this seems, the more you're making, the less likely you are to be unemployed. According to a new study at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people making between $39,000 and $50,000 is 9 percent, and it only drops more as your income climbs: If you're making $79,100 or more, only 3.2 percent to 5 percent of the people in your income bracket have lost their jobs.
- more infoRaises too be meager for IT according to study
At less than 2 percent, raises in technology salaries will be small in 2010, according to a report by Computer Economics. Developers are at the top of both the raise list and the salary list, especially for highly complex application development work. Managers and senior executives will have to get to the back of the line.
IT workers are due to receive a median 1.8 percent bump in salary in 2010 - below the 2.7 percent rate of inflation and the lowest rate in the last five years - according to data from a 2010 salary report from Computer Economics. A similar report from technology job board Dice, in January, showed that in 2009 tech salaries rose a measly 1 percent.
"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."
By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be felt for some time.
"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.
- more infoHigh tech jobs continue to suffer according to government report
Silicon Valley's decline has been charted over an eight-year period between 2000 and 2008 in which venture capital investment meant big gains for technology workers' wages in the beginning, but those IT wages have since diminished. The recovery will be slow and gradual, according to government economists. On the whole, high-tech industries in Silicon Valley declined sharply in employment and wages from 2000 to 2004 but increased gradually in both respects from 2004 to 2008.
From 2000, when high-tech employment and wages peaked, to 2008, Silicon Valley's hightech industries lost more than 108,400 jobs, or 19.9 percent of their employment.8 High-tech industries in the rest of the Nation lost 6.2 percent of employment. In addition, real wages fell by 13.5 percent among Silicon Valley's high-tech industries, while high-tech wages grew by 1.3 percent in the rest of the Nation.
- more info